


It’s just a Saturday night

by kitlee625



Series: Call Buddies [2]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Doctors & Physicians, Gen, Medical Jargon, Medical stuff, Philinda Appreciation Week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-03
Updated: 2016-06-03
Packaged: 2018-07-11 22:42:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7073467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitlee625/pseuds/kitlee625
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Doctors AU. First year. It's just another Saturday night at the hospital.<br/>Written for Philinda Appreciation Week. Prompt: AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It’s just a Saturday night

**Author's Note:**

> Another installment in the Call Buddies AU, written for Philinda Appreciation Week. Prompt: AU. 
> 
> The title comes from the song “Saturday Night” by the Bay City Rollers.
> 
> And in case anyone was confused about the different levels of training:  
> May and Coulson are internal medicine residents, so that means three years of residency. The first year is the intern year.

Normally, Coulson likes taking call on the weekends. On weekdays, the intern on call is inevitably bombarded with a never ending stream of work. However, on the weekends, the pace of the hospital slows to something more manageable. With fewer patients, fewer new admissions, and fewer tests to arrange, there is time to slow down and actually think about the patients rather than just rushing from one emergency to another. Some of his biggest breakthroughs have occurred on Saturday and Sunday nights when he and May have talked about their mystery cases. However, tonight, he isn’t in the mood for any of that.

Maybe it’s the cold winter weather, or the fact that these past six months have been the longest of his life, but he’s starting to dread coming into work each day. The hours are impossibly long, and he hasn’t seen even seen the sun in weeks. Worse though is the knowledge that he still has two and half years of this before he finishes his residency, and even longer if he does a fellowship.

The exhaustion has settled deep into his bones, and he is so tired during the day that he feels like he is running on autopilot. He no longer feels the same joy he once did in caring for his patients. Now when he sees a new patient, all he sees is a laundry list of tasks to complete before he can discharge them.

By 6 pm, he finishes most of the day’s work, and he checks the emergency department census for potential new admits. Thankfully, it is completely empty aside from two people waiting to go to the operating room. Not his problem. With any luck, he’ll actually be able to get some sleep tonight.

He’s starting to get hungry, so he goes down to the office where May is working to see if she wants to grab some dinner. When he gets to the office, he finds her listening to music and pouring over a thick stack of medical records.

“Hey, want to get dinner?”

She glances at the clock and shakes her head. “Maybe later. I’m getting a transfer patient who should be here in a couple of hours, and I have all these records to go through.”

He makes a face. “How long was this one at the outside hospital before transfer?”

She rolls her eyes. “Two months.”

“I don’t know why they even bother transferring patients over after so long,” Coulson says. “I mean what do they think we can do that their local hospital can’t.”

May gives him a curious look. “Everything okay? It’s not like you to be so cynical.”

He shrugs. “Yeah. Fine. Just tired.”

May gives him a sympathetic look. “Hopefully you can get some sleep tonight. The emergency room looks pretty empty.”

“Yeah.”

He leaves and goes down to the cafeteria. May is right, it isn’t like him to be so cynical. It’s easy to blame this on exhaustion, but he wonders if the grind of intern life is making him forget what made him want to be a doctor in the first place.

He manages to eat his chili dog in peace, without getting interrupted by a single page. As he is leaving the cafeteria, he notices that the coffee shop is about to close, and he buys a cup of May’s favorite tea for her. He suddenly wants to talk to her and find out if he’s the only intern who feels this way.

When he gets back to her office though, it is empty. He’s about to leave the tea on the table, when he notices a commotion at the other end of the hall. A group of nurses are crowded around one of the rooms, and someone has brought out the crash cart.

Instinctively, he jogs towards the room and slips between the gathered nurses to see what’s going on.

An older woman is lying on the bed, completely unresponsive. May is standing at the head of the bed, squeezing air into the patient’s lungs with an Ambu bag, and giving orders.

“Thirty more seconds, then hold compressions for a pulse check. Have 1 amp of epi standing by.”

“What’s going on?” Coulson asks sliding in beside her.

“This woman was found down by the nurses doing evening vitals.”

“One of your patients?”

May shakes her head. “There’s something wrong with the paging system. The code team still hasn’t arrived.”

The code team is led by the ICU resident, who is probably three floors above them in the ICU. “Do you want me to get them?” Coulson asks.

“I just asked Amy to. Can you take over chest compressions from David?” May checks the clock and then announces, “Okay, that’s two minutes. Pause compressions for a pulse check, rhythm check.”

The nurse, David, doing chest compressions pauses and places his fingers against the patient’s carotid. He shakes his head. “Nothing.”

May glances at the monitor. “Still PEA. Push 1 amp of epi and resume compressions.”

David steps aside, and Coulson steps up, pushing hard and fast on the woman’s chest. He has never been in a real code before, but his all day ACLS training comes flooding back to him. At the time he thought it was silly that the instructor played them “Staying Alive” by the BeeGees to keep the pace for doing chest compressions, but now he finds himself humming the melody to maintain a good rhythm.

Ah … ha … ha … ha … staying alive … staying alive.

At the head of the bed, May is blowing air into the patient’s lungs with the Ambu bag, and it occurs to him that in this moment, they are literally this woman’s life support. He glances at May, wondering if she is as nervous as he is, but she looks calm and completely in control.

“Thirty seconds, and it’ll be time for another pulse check, rhythm check. Have 1 amp of epi standing by,” May says.

When it’s time to check, Coulson presses his sweaty fingers to the woman’s carotid, anxiously feeling for a pulse. He is suddenly very aware of his own heartbeat, pounding in his chest, but there is still nothing from her.

He looks at the monitor to see what rhythm she’s in, but May has already done that and is calling for the nurses to charge the defibrillator.

When Coulson used to watch medical TV shows as a kid, he always loved this moment, and it is even more thrilling in real life. The defibrillator hums to life, then beeps when it is fully charged. May tells everyone to step back, and then presses the button, sending 200 joules of electricity through the patient’s body. The patient’s body jerks as the electricity courses through her, and May instructs them to resume compressions and starts squeezing the Ambu bag again.

Just then, the code team rushes in, led by the ICU resident, who surveys the situation. 

“What’s going on?” he asks.

“70 year old woman, found in PEA arrest. We just finished the fourth round of compressions, and she was in v-tach, so we shocked her with 200 joules. She’s gotten 2 amps of epi, and we’re drawing up the 3rd.”

With ICU resident there, some of the nervous energy dissipates. Everyone watches the monitors as two minutes count down until it is time for another pulse check.

This time when Coulson presses shaky fingers to the woman’s neck, he feels a weak pulse. “She’s got a pulse!” he shouts.

The ICU resident nods. “Someone get a blood pressure. Let’s get her packed up and ready to roll.” He turns to May and says, “Good job running the code.”

May and Coulson step aside as the code team comes in to stabilize her for transport. Once they are ready, they disappear as quickly as they came, leaving May, Coulson, and the floor nurses standing behind in shock.

May turns to Coulson and shakes her head. “That was crazy.”

“You were amazing,” he says. He can’t believe how well she handled herself. She ran the code like an experienced resident instead of just an intern. Deep down, he wonders if he would have been able to do the same thing in her shoes, or if he would have just been screaming internally the whole time.

May keeps shaking her head. “I don’t even know how I did it. It was like all that training just took over.” She leans against him and puts her head against his shoulder, suddenly too tired to stand upright anymore.

Coulson puts his arm around her. “So what happened? If this wasn’t your patient, how did you get pulled in?”

“When the code team didn’t come, the nurses ran down the hall banging on all the offices.”

“Lucky you were there, and not down with me getting a chili dog,” Coulson says.

May smiles. “You know, I could really go for a chili dog right about now.” She checks the clock. “I still have about an hour until my transfer patient arrives.”

“Want some company?” Coulson asks.

“Sure.” She stands up, and he follows her out of the office. “Too bad the coffee shop is closed though. I really need some tea.”

“Oh!” Coulson finds the discarded cup of tea where he left it outside the room. Miraculously it avoided being knocked over in all the commotion. “I brought you some. It’s probably cold though.”

May smiles at him. “You’re the best,” she says.

Coulson smiles. He can’t believe that just a few hours ago, he was feeling tired and bored about work. Now this whole body feels electrically charged from the adrenaline rushing through it.

May notices his smile. “You look like you’re in a better mood than you were before.”

He nods. “Just thinking about how crazy our jobs are. There’s so much of it that’s boring or frustrating or exhausting, and then something like this happens, and you save someone’s life.”

May laughs. “Yeah. Another Saturday night at the office.”


End file.
